BRUSSELS – In the light of the 20th anniversary of the EU-Western Balkans Summit in Thessaloniki, the European Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG) organizes the official launch and presentation of the latest policy brief “Keeping the promise of Thessaloniki: how to make enlargement work for everyone 20 years later?”.
The event will be organized at the European Parliament, in cooperation with the Enlargement, Western Europe and Northern Cooperation Unit of the European Parliament’s Directorate-General for Union External Policies (DG EXPO).
The two authors of the memoir, Milica DelevićDirector of Governance and Political Affairs at the EBRD, and Jovana Marovic, former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of European Affairs of the Government of Montenegro, will briefly address the main issues and conclusions during the event at the European Parliament, which will be moderated by Florian Bieber, Professor of Southeast European History and Politics at the University of Graz and coordinator of BiEPAG.
This new BiEPAG policy brief explores how enlargement can still work, particularly in the new geopolitical context following Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the granting of candidate country status to Ukraine and Moldova in June 2022.
“The enlargement process has not only been relaunched, but has also acquired a renewed sense of purpose and urgency. It is now crucial to ensure that the process is effective for all countries involved – both those in the Western Balkans and the new applicants from Eastern Europe,” say the BiEPAG researchers.
According to the authors, compared to the high hopes of 2003, the current situation with regard to EU enlargement is deeply disappointing. However, the policy brief highlights that Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine has changed the geopolitical situation in Europe and the world.
“All of a sudden, after years in which the goal of membership of the European Union was referred to as the ‘European perspective’ to appear less definitive and less threatening to the citizens of EU member states, the number of candidates and potential candidates for membership of the European Union has increased. the organization went from seven to ten,” the authors point out.
Twenty years since the Thessaloniki promise of the European perspective of the Western Balkans
